Saturday 22 October 2011

IT'S A LITTLE THING CALLED DEMOCRATIC CHOICE

I'd like to say a big thank you to BBC News 24 for mentioning the fact that the SNP conference was taking place today in Inverness.

Of course I don't know what they covered earlier on, but I watched the headlines at 8pm tonight and they mentioned  that Alex had acknowledged in his speech  that many Scots had shown interest in "devo max" or "independence lite". And that was the all the coverage. The government of one of the constituent nations (the only one to be a majority government) was having its conference and the BBC acknowledged it was happening. Stop.


Thank goodness there isn't a special tax to pay for this BBC thing... oh,  yeah, I forgot. There is. About three Bank of England pounds a week we pay to be neglected. 


Anyway, I've heard a lot of unionists tittering about the SNP has gone soft; it knows it can't manage without the mother of the empire to keep it afloat; it knows it needs a subsidy from hard working English taxpayers (Boris), and the brains of people like George Osborne, Tessie O'May and William Hague. 


Well people who take that view will likely be voting for the union anyway, so it won't matter. But it may occur to the more cerebral that the true reason for offering a third option is exactly what the SNP has said it is.


Polls seem to show that the majority of Scots want that option on the referendum. 


I don't want it. Not for a second. 


It would leave England in charge of our foreign policy and our defence. So we'd off to bomb more Muslim nations with oil, as we have been doing for the last 10 years and more. Scotland doesn't need folk like Ten Pints Hague representing us abroad, and we definitely don't want to continue to be represented in everything at Brussels by English Ministers who have no responsibility for, knowledge of, or interest in, Scottish affairs. 


Nope, I don't want it, but a lot of Scots do.


It's maybe hard to believe that a political party could be in touch or listening to what people want. It's certainly not what we are used to. In England they have had a listening exercise on the NHS this summer, and having listened, they appear to have heard very little of what anyone has been saying. 


A few months ago we had a referendum in the UK organised by the Tories and the Liberals. It offered two choices for UK voting methods. A vast number of the population wanted neither of these choices, but great interest had been expressed in a third. The third, however, would have seriously reduced the number of seats gained by the two big London parties, and so the third was not allowed. In short Cameron rigged the referendum to get the answer he wanted.


And of course we discussed (above) the lengths that Dave is going to to subvert democracy on Europe. He clearly thinks we're too stupid to be trusted to make informed decisions. Just like I think he's too stupid to make informed decisions.


My point is that we are not used to politicians who accept that it's the people who should decide these matters, and if  a large number of them give a preference in polls (which the parties are perfectly prepared to quote when they show what they want them to show) then that preference should be on the referendum paper.


So did it ever occur to the titterers, I wonder, that that is why the SNP wants the third option on their referendum ballot paper? Probably not, and if it did it wouldn't make a good story anyway. 


Here endeth the lesson.

8 comments:

  1. In five years' time, the Union will be no more

    I Watched it on BBC Parliament as there was not ignorant interuption from the BBC Scotland's so called journalists and it was very moving and funny in bits.

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  2. Rangers Football Club showed the biasedBBC the door after persistent lying and fake video splicing. It's a pity that the SNP don't have the gonads to do the same thing.
    The delays and watering down of a referendum on independence tends to make AS and the SNP look very suspicious.

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  3. Oh wow CH.

    That is an amazing article from an avowed Labour man, in an avowed Labour paper.

    The Tories, and now it would seem the Liberals, have no "feeling" for Scotland. As the article says only the stupidest or most out of touch would have handed Mr Salmond a £13.4 billion gift on the week of his conference. next week would have been a more sensible time to announce the blow.

    And now they are going to send their prime minister and all of their cabinet up to lecture us on how foolish we would be to leave mother England, and of course they will get everything wrong when they do.

    It will be another "we in Scotland" Thatcher period as they blunder about mispronouncing our place names, attributing English law to our institutions. (Thatcher regularly produced English law solutions to Scottish problems "...speak to the school board governors", she said, when we didn't have any.)

    [Mind you, didn't that fool Gordon Brown want to make August Bank Holiday a BRITISH DAY to avoid having to give any more holidays... when Scotland doesn't have an August Bank Holiday, and never has.]


    The Tories and Labour are singing from the same hymn sheet, but only the retired politicians will dare share platforms with the other side. John Reid can stand with Cameron, but you can bet that that Curran won't in case it affects her electability in the future.

    I'm going to reproduce that article as a post, because of the new pop-out box, links appear in that tiny box, and you have to stretch it to make it readable. Not everyone will be able to do that.

    Thank you for pointing me in the direction of it (again). It's cheered me immensely.

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  4. Nah Monty. It's not weakness. It's strength and courage.

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  5. I would like to pick up the posts of CH and Monty.

    I feel that we are at or even just moving beyond the tipping point in the independence quest. Very soon, or even now, it will be unstoppable, like the Guardian article states.

    What will become of the paid liars, propagandists and fifth column which infests our BBC and press, after independence.

    Quite clearly the puppet masters who scheme and plot the diffusion of this anti independence propaganda will have no place in the free and unbiased news media we will need. Their sock puppets, Sally Mags, Jackie Bird, Glenn Campbell, etc will just slope off south of Carlisle or retire to write books and airline travel articles but, we need a root and branch gutting of the BBC assets and personnel we inherit.

    I am of the opinion that sooner rather than later Eck and has team will have to square off against the BBC, well before the referendum. They need to know we know what they are doing and it will have consequences.

    I hope this does not sound vindictive but there is a monstrous regiment of people working to sabotage our movement. An action, in some countries and cultures would be rewarded by mire than a cold shoulder.


    Ying and Yang

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  6. more than a cold shoulder, sorry, no correction button.

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  7. Lupus...
    Just listened to the Rangers v Hearts game and the effect of the ban on the BBC means the BBC have to say they can't do a post match interview with Rangers. The longer this goes on the more people will wake up and ask why.

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  8. Usually Wolfie, the press sees the writing on the wall and follows the money (eg: one by one the papers changed in Scotland before the GE, and even The Sun backed the SNP).

    The Beeb is between a rock and a hard place. They are full of Labour placemen who must be seeing what is coming, and yet they are so controlled by London (and probably frightened that the Tories are going to privatize great chunks of them, or reduce their funding even farther) that they won't jump ship till they are absolutely certain that it is sinking.

    I don't think it sounds vindictive to demand a state funded press be a free and fair press. My money pays for it as much as David Cameron's does.

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